I'm curious, does twbt currently allow more than the 16 default colors for materials? Either as overrides or by using the state colors?
Yes. If you set material basic/build/tile colour to value >= 100, it will use colour from df.global.world.raws.language.colors[value-100] instead. No one is using this feature as far as I know so it didn't get developed further.
This is actually rather unsafe, because it depends on the color definitions never being modified, which is not guaranteed. Simply adding a single extra language color would mean that everything is changed.
Rather than complaining that the dog speaks poorly, we should be amazed that it speaks at all.
The caution is valid, of course.
If I understand it correctly, tile set installations tend to do a lot of things to files, and locking down descriptor_color_standard.txt would be rather reasonable when the tile set depends on it (in particular if it also adjusts color values to match the tile set theme).
If we're not talking about a tile set, but rather a tool, I'd consider doing the translation on tool startup/connection to DF/loading of a save, or just a straight comparison and refusal to work (with an appropriate error message, of course) on a mismatch.
I have to say this TWBT Next thing looks rather impressive, both additional colors and more power for tiles. The concern I have is if it has a significant FPS effect (I've made some DFHack scripts that became rather sluggish even though the only thing happening was rendering).
